Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#601

Post by Throwawaybird » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

anthonypasq wrote: post #598

GloriousKoji wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a relic of SAT verbal analogies section which was removed in 2005. The syntax "A:B::C:D" represents the statement "A is to B as C is to D". So on the test you'd get questions such as python:snake :: ___ : ___ a) lua:satellite b) swift:bird c) java:coffee d) pearl:gem and you might select A because python is an interpreted scripting language and a type of snake in the same way lua is a scripting language and a ty…

huh? wouldnt the answer be D? python is a type of snake, pearl is a type of gem. neither A or B make any sense.

The answer is B) I believe.

A swift is a type of bird, so that would follow the same logic as the example;

ProgrammingLang:Animal

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#602

Post by shagie » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

sleepybrett wrote: post #599

shagie wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nostalgia point for Tribes... There was a lan gaming place back when people had dial up... and that place had a T1 to the store that had double low double digit ping times when triple digit was common. Tribes was one of the games installed and this also had the advantage that when a few people in the store were playing it they could coordinate playing a tank much better than other players on the server. MissionForc…

My roommate at the time and I both had jobs at the same webdev/hosting/isp place (oh how i miss the late 90s) and we got a deal on a shotgunned isdn connection (256kbps woooooo) to our place (working from home before it was cool). It was magical.

https://web.archive.org/web/20021014120633/http://www.ping-t...

They had 20 game machines (for the day)...

> Each gaming computer has a 1-Gigahertz Athlon, 21-inch Monitor, GeForce 2 GTS, Sound Blaster Live, 256Mb of 133Mhz RAM, 10/100 Ethernet card, and an optical logitech mouse.

that were in two rooms in the basement. You could get 10 people in one room, and 10 in another and then have team games against each other where you could talk freely without worrying about the other side hearing you (unless you were shouting).

> Each computer is on its own 100 Mbit Full Duplex switch port. The network as a whole is linked to the internet via a T1.

It was $2.50 / hour (and if you played for 3 hours, you would get another 2 hours free). On the weekends, high schoolers and college students would sometimes play for a good 10 hours for $15 (way cheaper than the classic quarter per play arcade).

The vending machine was stocked at $0.50 for each thing in it... so you could get a candy bar and soda for $1.00.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#603

Post by mohamedkoubaa » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 6:33 PM UTC

GloriousKoji wrote: post #481

mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this matrix mean?

It's a relic of SAT verbal analogies section which was removed in 2005. The syntax "A:B::C:D" represents the statement "A is to B as C is to D". So on the test you'd get questions such as python:snake :: ___ : ___ a) lua:satellite b) swift:bird c) java:coffee d) pearl:gem and you might select A because python is an interpreted scripting language and a type of snake in the same way lua is a scripting language and a ty…

I was asking because I didnt understand the claim made about game engines using the given verbal analogy but thanks for sharing this

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#604

Post by onraglanroad » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #436

onraglanroad wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who understand society care about it. When you employ someone you take on a certain responsibility. You can't negate that by pretending that you're in an equal power relationship. That's why we have workers' rights.

>That's why we have workers' rights. Wrong. Being perpetually employed is not a right.

There's a massive difference between being perpetually employed and being fired for no reason at a job you've already demonstrated your ability at.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#605

Post by klaussilveira » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #209

LarsDu88 wrote: post #63

Microsoft, one the world's greatest monopolists, bequeaths a game engine monopoly unto Epic Games, in one the biggest corporate blunders of all time. If they were smarter about this, they would commoditize their compliment and open source the Doom The Dark Ages engine just like John Carmack did with the Quake 3 engine.

Yes. As I suggested in another thread: an open-source, modern IdTech would fill the empty quadrant in the Godot : Unity :: ____ : Unreal matrix. A few mid-size studios pitching in to fund continued development on a Blender model could turn IdTech into a major competitor to Unreal Engine in a relatively short timeframe, ultimately costing them a lot less than licensing.

There is https://o3de.org

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#606

Post by inigyou » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 7:34 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #581

inigyou wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft didn't get shut down yet, only enshittified. I believe it's still very profitable due to the enshittification? I heard they sell skyblock maps for $8

I don’t fully agree with this because the original experience (Java version, private servers, 100% free content) is still extremely popular and the same as it always was. I think it would be enshittification if Microsoft said “sorry, you now have to rent servers through us and all content comes from our content shop,” but that’s not the case. Merely offering a product that has a bad value is not enshittification.

Is it enshittification if you heavily advertise the enshittified product and attract all the new users there? Like IRC and Discord, can we say Discord enshittified chat even though IRC is still around?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#607

Post by wpm » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 8:06 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #583

wpm wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because she is literally the head of Xbox and signed off on this plan Being a woman doesn't make her not responsible despite being the ultimate decision maker in the division, nor should it shield her from criticism.

That's my question reworded: she wound up being in charge of this particular sinking ship at this particular point in time. Did she hole it below the waterline personally or no?

Does it matter? The one person who takes responsibility for what occurs in a huge organization like Xbox is the person driving the ship. What's done is done. She is responsibile for the layoffs, whether they were made necessary by her or not. She is responsible for choosing to fire the idTech Director of Engine Tech. She owns all of it, because that is literally her job as CEO. Boo hoo her predecessor made terrible decisions too.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#608

Post by MFHava » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 8:52 PM UTC

BikiniPrince wrote: post #278

mjr00 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're framing this as a thing done by a greedy corporation in an evil manner, which maybe it is, but it's also just a sign of the times. For most of the 90s and 00s, your game engine, specifically idTech in this case, was a competitive advantage. Doom and Quake/2/3 all represented massive technological jumps over their predecessors and were way ahead of their competition in terms of looks. Games like Unreal (Tournam…

It’s a little simpler than that. The games that use this engine have poor sales and no one is even buying idTech. There isn’t any reason to keep them around when Microsoft is losing 64 cents on every dollar. They chopped every unprofitable studio and cast several to their own budgets. Presumably they are going to sell off the mediocre studios and IP.

> no one is even buying idTech

Kinda hard to buy an engine that is not for sale...

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#609

Post by Capricorn2481 » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

zuzululu wrote: post #523

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, we're talking about Doom here. I doubt Doom is too alienating for heterosexual audiences. Doesn't that seem like an extremely inorganic segue into identity politics? Secondly, The "go woke or broke" thing has been a Schrodinger's mantra used by grifters to sell outrage. Everything is woke until it succeeds, and then suddenly it was always predetermined to succeed. The market, on the whole, doesn't seem…

> says more about the content you consume i can say the exact same for you and take a guess as to what your political leanings are but to be polite i'll leave it alone and agree to disagree

> i can say the exact same for you and take a guess as to what your political leanings

No, you can't really. You already said you don't even play videogames. The mere fact that you imply Doom was too woke speaks volumes to how little interest you have in actually understanding the current landscape. You can't be an outsider to the hobby, make such slanted claims, and then accuse people who actually like games and interact with others who play them of being disingenuous. We view them holistically, you can only observe them through the lens of the political content you consume.

And if that's the content you consume, you will more readily believe every Triple A game is stuffed to the gills with overt political messaging. The ironic part being Triple A studios tend to be the most safe and sanitized fence sitters of the industry and it's the indie games that tend to be more progressive and alienating. But you aren't going to see that irony because you aren't playing any of these games to begin with, which is what made your comment comedic.

When people say tourists are coming and politicizing the hobby, you are who they are talking about. I am telling you that not to point and laugh, but to let you know you're uninformed.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#610

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

_joel wrote: post #578

satvikpendem wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, no one actually knows besides making pithy statements like this.

Why, has what they have been doing, working so well for them?

No, but it doesn't mean the opposite will either. Some solutions are orthogonal and in reality commenters online have no idea what to do in these sorts of business situations and therefore resort to making pithy statements.